There was a time, in the not too distant past, when the word ‘activist’ would conjure an image of someone ‘radical’; a naked man or woman chained to an iron railing or running through the streets waving a banner emblazoned with a fierce, revolutionary slogan.

But in recent years, activism has undergone something of a transformation. The power and ubiquity of social media has provided us with the opportunity to digitally shout about the things that make us angry, and ensure that those shouts are heard by more than just our ‘real life’ friends and family. It has meant that activism is accessible to all, and we’re seeing an unprecedented rise in the number of online campaigns and social movements that are making real, offline change. Yes, we can still chain ourselves to railings if we need to, but it's no longer the only way to make an impact.

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Last year, alongside a few friends, I organised the #FreePeriods protest outside Downing Street, calling on the government to provide free menstrual products in all schools in order to end period poverty in the UK. Over 2,000 people came, dressed top-to-toe in red, singing ‘Bleeding Love’, ready to shout about their periods with no restraint. With the exception of a few of my close friends, everyone was there because they’d seen a tweet or Instagram post about the cause.

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As a result of our protesting, the government agreed to give £1.5 million to Brook, a young person’s charity, to address period poverty in the UK. We proved that activism works and showed that, now more than ever, social media has become an indispensable tool in galvanising passionate people and eliciting tangible change.

But it’s not just Twitter and Instagram that has triggered this new activism and protest.

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I would argue that the rise in activism is due to the sheer volume of issues worth protesting about. In this extraordinary period of political turbulence, we certainly have more to be angry about, and activism is, for my generation, the obvious way to express our concerns at a time when politics feels so distant to us.

No group feels more disconnected from Westminster politics than young people. With less than a third of MPs being female, seven per cent LGBT, eight per cent from ethnic minorities, and 29 per cent privately educated, the Westminster world of traditional politics is depressingly unrepresentative and unlikely to stand up for the causes that matter most to us.

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Activism has become our way of explicitly showing politicians what we care about, and the past year has seen a remarkable influx of teenage-led social movements, from the amazing March for Our Lives campaign to the poignant work of Legally Black UK, who campaign against the underrepresentation of black people in the media.

For me, #FreePeriods highlighted how a single, angry teenage girl can have real political impact purely through activism, as well as the power of the Internet to connect with like-minded, and equally angry, people.

We are subverting the long-held stereotypes of what the 21st-century teenager looks like. The picture of the lazy, self-obsessed, avocado-eating millennial who would rather be watching Love Island than Question Time is, these days, more fiction than fact. The reality is that you’re now more likely to see a picture of a teenager waving a banner at a protest in Parliament Square when you scroll through Instagram, than pouting narcissistically in their bedroom mirror. And that’s a pretty incredible thing.